


And Deliver Us From Evil

by Linane



Series: Children of Stone [2]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, Angels, Angst, But with a happy ending, Demons, Gods, M/M, Mythology - Freeform, Religion, Sort of reincarnation AU, Wingfic, emotional h/c, h/c, use of drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 22:15:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17030970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linane/pseuds/Linane
Summary: Written for the 12 Days of Christmas 2018 - Day 3.I suppose this is a deleted scene, which could have never made it to the originalChildren of Stone. A 'Christmas Special', if you like, but of the same flavour as the rest ofChildren of Stone. You will need to read that story first for this to make sense. Please note that there is 1 other snippet of this universe, in the form ofKiss 29.





	And Deliver Us From Evil

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gosiamahoney](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gosiamahoney/gifts).



> Written for the 12 Days of Christmas 2018 - Day 3.
> 
> I suppose this is a deleted scene, which could have never made it to the original [_Children of Stone_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9664577). A 'Christmas Special', if you like, but of the same flavour as the rest of _Children of Stone_. You will need to read that story first for this to make sense. Please note that there is 1 other snippet of this universe, in the form of [_Kiss 29_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8926912/chapters/30039402).

 

It’s been over two years. Nothing, compared to how long they have loved.

Over two years since he found Kili again on the streets. Destroying human minds with knowledge they couldn’t possibly comprehend, just so he could suck out some semblance of normality out of them. Destroying his body with drugs, violence and sex, just so he could feel _something_ again.

Kili truly does experience everything there is to experience, forever searching for the echoes of the one thing he tells himself he cannot have.

Fili weans him off the drugs slowly. Because otherwise it will hurt. Because it might be enough to shatter his mind completely.

Six months of reducing Kili’s doses, little by little, injecting him when it's time, dealing with seedy dealers, dispatching several of them, offering closeness in small doses, until Kili’s mind understands that he can have the real deal and that it’s better than the chemicals. Slowly re-introducing physicality, touch, feel.

Watching Kili fight. With himself. With his darkness. To love and yet to consist of more than his love alone.

Two months after he’s clean Kili sits in front of him on the carpet, trying to match his legs to Fili’s exact position, can’t quite make it.

“What are you doing?”

“Meditating.”

“Isn’t it kind of… sacrilegious?”

“No one’s ever tried to stop me.”

Kili tilts his head.

Fili closes his eyes, takes a deep breath. “It helps me… organise my mind. Re-charge. I suppose it’s my way of fighting with time.”

When he opens his eyes again more than an hour later Kili is still there, watching him.

“Will you teach me?”

It takes some doing, but after a while they are meditating together, side by side. It’s as if someone gave Kili arrows to shoot his demons with.

That summer he watches Kili try to piece himself back together, try to achieve his own normality.

It’s September when Fili brings back home the state-of-the-art Neuro-Link Set. Kili watches him place it carefully on a shelf.

“Not yet,” Fili says. “But soon.”

“When?”

“It depends on you. But I was thinking maybe Christmas? If you feel ready.”

Kili nods. “Christmas then.”

 

\---

 

“C’mon Fili, you promised!”

“If you’re ready.”

“I _am_ ready. I’ve been ready for weeks.”

“Mahal’s balls, how can you _still_ be such a whiny brat?!”

Kili crosses his arms. “I’m over four thousand years old, I’ll have you know!”

“I’m still older than you.”

“ _Five years_! Hardly matters in the grand scheme of things, don’t you think?!”

Fili kisses the top of his head, smirks into the chocolate coloured hair. “I’ll _always_ be older than you.”

Kili squirms, huffs. “You _promised_.”

Fili searches his dark, hazel eyes for a moment, but they appear completely human nowadays. And serious. More serious than Kili should ever be.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

 

\---

 

They are settled together on the sofa, several blankets around them rumpled into a comfortable mess. Leather gloves, turtlenecks, lube and condoms to hand. They know they’ll want the physical after.

Kili curls up on top of Fili’s chest, slotting himself between his loosely folded legs. He looks a bit like he’s napping, but Fili can tell that he’s awake.

Fili connects his token first, pushing aside need, apprehension, hope and visions of hell in a horribly jaded mind he remembers from the last time they tried this.

“Kili?”

The rush is still the same. They are One again and Fili feels love, first and foremost.

“Start with something easy. Something neutral, to both of us.”

Sunny field full of golden wheat. Rolling hills dotted with groves as far as the eye can see. Lush forest to their right and behind them. Sound of a stream in the distance and crickets. Everything careful, measured.

“Nice. Why here?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been here, once. It’s where I go when I meditate.”

Fili walks into the wheat, runs his hand over the gentle whiskers of the grain. Kili moans as one mind rubs against the other.

He tries not to look too closely at the stalks. There are faces. Countless faces. And on the trees behind them. And on the ground. Pretty veneer over something sinister, tamed to appear normal.

He stops.

A lizard comes out of the wheat, all black and slick. Then it’s a snake. Then a lizard again.

It stops next to his foot, looks up. It too has a face, something that may have been human once, with red eyes. It hisses and bares its fangs.

“Bazrael.” Kili’s eyes look tired as he watches the creature. “He taught me how to slaughter.”

Fili pushes, gently but firmly. He stomps on the lizard, satisfied with a squelching sound and a snap of delicate bones.

Kili sighs, and it sounds almost relieved. There are no more faces in the wheat.

“I can fight _with_ you, but I can’t fight _against_ you.”

Kili nods. “You’re not afraid of getting hurt.”

“No.”

“But you _are_ afraid that I’ll hurt you and then flee like that time when I took your Grace.”

“Yes.”

“So don’t let me hurt you. You’re better at this than I am.”

Fili smiles, takes his hand. “I don’t plan to.”

A cabin, on the outskirts of a village, deep in the mountains. Simple but sturdy, a veggie garden, some pigs, small stables with some ponies.

“Home,” Fili breathes, feeling emotions well up inside him, Kili soaking them up like a sponge.

It’s a little dark, a little too quiet. And a little too perfect. Fili tilts his head.

Some of the roof tiles tilt too and one or two fall off. Chickens appear, almost knocking Kili off his feet, and stars are switched on above them. Warm lights flicker on inside the windows and weeds at the front grow taller.

“That’s more like it.”

Kili grins in utter delight.

“Well, come on, we should say hi.”

Kili falters. “Amad. She’s –“

She died all alone, knowing that her only two sons and her brother died. Trying to reclaim a kingdom, which means less to them today than dust.

“No, stay in this moment, just now. Take it for what it is. For what we can have, because together we still remember.”

The door opens and their mother storms outside, wielding two buckets.

“There you are, you little rascals! What, did you two take a detour through all the forests of the Blue Ridge? I only sent you with two little errands and you’ve been gone all day!”

“Amad –“ Kili is crying and Fili feels himself biting his lip too.

She doesn’t give them the time to break down, she wouldn’t. Instead she yanks them down and kisses the top of their heads in turn and then resolutely hands them a bucket each.

“Well, don’t just stand there, get cleaned up! Dinner is halfway done and you’re not sitting at the table looking like this!”

“Yes, Amad.”

It comes out automatically. Neither of them is four thousand years old anymore.

Fili feels Kili curl up in his mind. It’s too much. They can’t stay here.

He tries to soothe the familiar presence, feels it sink inside his own mind, seeking solace.  
A church. Stained glass, gliding with a myriad of colours over marble floors.

He feels Kili wince, try to pull back.

“It’s just a construct. It can’t hurt you.”

Kili hesitates, but in the end comes to sit next to him in a pew.

“I like churches,” Fili confesses. “Always have. They’re so… _peaceful_.”

“Mmmm.” He watches Kili sit back, take his hand. “Thank you. I’ve never been inside one. I physically cannot enter.” Kili sends him a loop-sided grin. “It’s beautiful. Reminds me a bit of Dwarven halls…”

This time the shift is almost accidental.

The royal library. Dust, parchment, ink. Crackling fireplace behind them. Fili brushes his fingertips over the worn spines, sits down heavily in the chair. He can’t not.

“Are you almost done there, laddie?” Balin with his magnificent, white beard.

Fili stares at his ink-stained fingertips. He’s been at it since breakfast, smuggled a pie in and wolfed it down for lunch, his eyes never leaving the neat row of runes. Even after all this time, he still knows at least a dozen long-dead languages.

“How much more have you got left?” Thorin now, royal, even in his simple kaftan.

“But a few pages, uncle.”

“Hurry up then. Dis will have my guts if we’re not home by dinner.”

“Yes, uncle,” Fili whispers automatically.

And then… Pride, approval, praise. All those things he used to crave so much. Freely given, showered upon him, as he feels Kili’s hands come to rest on his shoulders and move to massage his stiff neck.

He closes his eyes, lets his brother in deeper.

“Do you want to see what you looked like to me?”

He looks at himself from below, standing up to three older dwarves, readying himself for a fight. Hammering out metal at the forge, smudging soot on his forehead with the back of his hand. Standing up to Thorin as he refuses to toss the hobbit over the battlements.

“You never needed his blessing. You would have made a great king.”

“I should have opposed him when he sent us to that tower.”

“Shhhh…”

Fili feels Kili’s hands cradling his face, or perhaps his heart.

“So much weight and responsibility still. You never absolve yourself of anything, do you?”

“It can’t be me.”

“Me, then.”

“Careful…”

“What about love?”

“What of it?”

“Do you feel guilty about loving me, Fili?”

“I don’t.”

“Liar.”

“You died for it.”

“As did you. Four thousand years ago.”

Fili swallows, feels his heart beating inside tainted but familiar hands.

“Would we have been better off turned into cold stone, crushed by time?” Kili asks.

“ _I_ did this to you.”

“I did this to myself.”

“No.”

“I don’t care!”

Fili feels the darkness looming all around him, soft and warm and familiar. Terrible and destructive, yes, but threaded with love that will protect him whatever the cost. Kili’s mind, no longer held back.

“Love me, Fili. Without regrets. For as long as it takes us to end.”

“I do. I will.”

They can’t tell how much longer they glide gently between one mind and the other. Time can’t get them there, inside their own worlds.

When they finally re-surface, the room is grey and pink and golden, as the sun struggles to rise over the horizon, behind a cheerfully flickering Christmas tree, which they decorated not for any god, but for each other’s joy.

They make love that morning, time and time again, and it feels a little bit like when they were but two dwarves camping out in the woods.

 

\---


End file.
